PLE-3056

A 36-year-old female drug abuser has an abscess with draining pus on her jaw where she lost a tooth from being struck in the face 2 weeks ago. She did not get medical help. You lance the lesion, express some lumpy material with difficulty, and send a swab of the organism to the lab for Gram stain, culture, and susceptibilities. The predominant organism in the Gram stain is a filamentous bacterium that is Gram positive, yet nothing grows in the lab. What is the most likely explanation for why it did not grow?